Why a Midwestern suburb is going on a youth sports building frenzy

Here is an example on what gets built, and what doesn’t, in our not-officially-in-a-recession economy.

In the fast-growing Indianapolis suburb of Westfield, Ind., there was a proposed $1 billion, 1,400-acre project that was going to include mostly new housing and stores, but would also have 150 acres set aside for youth sports fields, a new Y, and a minor-league baseball stadium. Because of the lousy real estate market, the housing-and-stores part of the development has been cut by two-thirds.

Meanwhile, the athletics portion of the project has broken off, and its size has doubled — to 300 acres, or as the Indianapolis Business Journal points out, the size of the Kings Island amusement park.

I’ve written about it here before (and before that), and I’ll write about it again, because cities keep doing it: using youth sports as an economic development tool. And why not? At most, your huge complex can host scads of tournaments, which means scads of out-of-town teams, which means scads of parents and kids spending money at your hotels and restaurants. At worst, if the out-of-towners don’t show up, you can justify the cost of the project (and Westfield’s was estimated, when it was half the current size, at around $60 million) by pointing out that, unlike building a new NFL stadium, the community gets to use it.

Westfield, population 27,000, is much more ambitious than most cities building youth sports complexes. Instead of just saying, we’re building a complex, Westfield and its mayor, Andy Cook (no relation to your humble blogger) have declared they are building “The Family Sports Capital of America.”

Why so grandiose? Westfield, located in Indiana’s Hamilton County, one of the fastest-growing in the nation, is trying to grab more of the executives who have been more apt to settle in other suburbs, particularly Carmel, located immediately to Westfield’s south. Carmel (hometown of your humble blogger) itself has stood out nationally because of its grand schemes, such as its embrace of roundabouts, its snagging of Michael Feinstein and his Great American Songbook, and its getting Kendra Wilkinson to film her reality show there. A few years back, the U.S. Census Bureau renamed the Indianapolis metropolitan area the Indianapolis-Carmel metro. One of Westfield’s few claims to fame was being the home of a serial killer.

Carmel has always been bigger, richer and more important than Westfield, and damnit, if the town was going to be known for being more than Carmel’s leftovers, it needed to do something grand. Hence, “The Family Sports Capital of America.” (Giving yourself a grandiose nickname is a tradition among Hoosiers. See Michael Jackson, “King of Pop.”)

With ground yet to be broken, we’re a long way from finding out whether Westfield can pop a big civic boner in the face of its rival, which I just realized is a highly inappropriate metaphor in a piece about a place kids play. But we are hardly a long way away from cities of any size determining that putting money into shiny, new youth sports complexes is maybe not such a good idea after all. As long as parents are willing to spend their last $5 on their kids and their sports, there is going to be a market for the facilities. The only question might be is if some other town is going to try to beat Westfield to the “Family Sports Capital of America” punch.

There are firms that do studies, and there are cities that on good authority can says they’ve gained tens of millions of dollars a year from such facilities — though that success is certainly not universal. However, even the most expensive facilities of these kind are only one-tenth to one-sixteenth the cost of, say, building a pro stadium. Plus, with tournaments, you can guarantee a lot of out-of-towners coming in.

What hasn’t been measured, also, is any effect these facilities have on housing prices, or the desire of families to relocate there. That certainly could be a boost.

However, you can’t build these with the expectation they are going to be a mint. If the local are using the fields and facilities quite a bit, then you can call yourself successful.

[…] If you’re wondering why it seems like you can’t throw a ball in your neighborhood without a travel team player catching it, the above is Exhibit A in the fear that drives parents to spend big bucks on their children’s athletic development, thus inspiring even more leagues in more sports to form so they may collect those big bucks, and thus inspiring cities to spend big bucks on athletic complexes in hopes of getting more travel teams to spend big bucks in their towns. […]

[…] If you’re wondering why it seems like you can’t throw a ball in your neighborhood without a travel team player catching it, the above is Exhibit A in the fear that drives parents to spend big bucks on their children’s athletic development, thus inspiring even more leagues in more sports to form so they may collect those big bucks, and thus inspiring cities to spend big bucks on athletic complexes in hopes of getting more travel teams to spend big bucks in their towns. […]